Businessweek Archives

The New York Yankees? Never Heard Of `Em (Int'l Edition)

August 24, 1997

International -- Readers Report

THE NEW YORK YANKEES? NEVER HEARD OF `EM (int'l edition)

I must take exception to your statement that the Yankees are the "most fabled franchise in professional sports" ("Great pitcher? Maybe. Great marketing? For sure," Sports Business, July 28). In North America maybe; in the world at large, no chance.

Outside North America, Japan, and the countries in the Caribbean basin where baseball is played, it barely registers on the screen of sports, professional or otherwise. I grew up in England, and when I came here I knew about as much about baseball and its teams as the average American knows about cricket. That is, next to nothing.

Imagine how much the average person in a non-English-speaking country knows about baseball and the Yankees. For most of the world, the most fabled franchises are in football--soccer--especially the major European teams.

John C. English

Bethesda, Md.Return to top

THIS IS MEXICO'S VELVET REVOLUTION (int'l edition)

Your article on the recent elections in Mexico ("Mexico: Now the ruling party will crumble even faster," International Outlook, July 21) took a good approach. It is hard to find this kind of article in U.S. magazines without finding stereotyped ideas about Mexico and Mexicans.

The article, however, doesn't show the real magnitude or meaning of the political phenomenon that occurred in the election. For the first time since 1911, there is not an absolute majority for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). In 2000, Mexico could become the second American neighbor with a leftist president--after Cuba, of course. Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the newly elected mayor of Mexico City, is the son of Lazaro Cardenas, the president who expropriated the oil companies in Mexico more then 60 years ago.

If the PRI wins again in 2000, the U.S. will witness the continuation of a totally antidemocratic government just across its border. Many people in Mexico believe that we are living through a "velvet revolution."